Bone Inventory (1971). A complete listing of all the Australopithecine finds, up to the end of 1971, was printed in a new book. This included all the African bones of our “half-ape/half-human ancestors” (*Time-Life, The Missing Link, Vol. 2). Although over 1,400 specimens are described, most are little more than scraps of bone or isolated teeth. Not one complete skeleton of one individual exists. When parts of bones are found, they, of course, can be moved into various positions and be interpreted as belonging to different creatures with very different skull and jaw shapes. To this day, there is no real evidence of any genuine non-human ancestor of ours. Chapter 13 explains why reputable scientists question or reject the various finds by anthropologists.

*Matthews Attacks Darwinism (1971). By the latter part of the 20th century, even though the ignorant public continued to be told that evolution was a triumphant, proven success, it was difficult to find any scientist who would defend Darwin’s theories before his peers. *L. Harrison Matthews, another distinguished scientist, was asked to write a new introduction to Darwin’s Origin of the Species, to replace *Thompson’s 1956 Introduction which scathingly attacked Darwinism. In his Introduction, Matthews said that Thompson’s attacks on Darwin were “unanswerable.” Then Matthews proceeded to add more damaging facts (*L. Harrison Matthews, Introduction to Charles Darwin, Origin of the Species, 1971 edition). The evolutionary theory must have run into hard times, when book publishers cannot find a reputable scientist who is appreciative either of its basic teachings or its founder.

Nice Symposium(1972). By the early 1970s, not only were biological evolutionists in turmoil, but cosmologists (astronomical evolutionists) were also. The Nice Symposium met in April 1972, to summarize what had been accomplished and list what was still unknown. The unanswered questions included just about every aspect of evolution in outer space! (See “Nice” in the back index for a number of the questions.) How did hydrogen clouds form themselves into stars? How did linear momentum from the theorized Big Bang change itself into angular momentum—and begin circling. How did the planets and moons form? The entire list is mind-boggling. After all these years, the astronomers still do not have answers to any of the basic evolutionary problems (Review of the Nice Symposium, in R.E. Kofahl and K.L. Segraves, The Creation Explanation, pp. 141-143).

Institute for Creation Research(1972). Henry Morris and associates founded the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) this year. It has since become the leading anti-evolution organization in the world and is located in El Cajon, California.

Return of the Hopeful Monster(1972). *Stephen Jay Gould, a highly respected paleontologist at Harvard; *Niles Eldredge, the head paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City; and *Steven M. Stanley, of Johns Hopkins University, led out in resuscitating *Richard Goldschmidt’s “hopeful monster” theory—and demanding that the community of evolutionist scientists consider it as the only possible mechanism for trans-species changeovers.

It was first revived in a cautious science paper presented by*Gould and *Eldredge in 1972 (Punctuated Equilibria: An Alternative to Phyletic Gradualism, 1972), but it was not until 1977 that an article by Gould brought it back to center stage (“Return of the Hopeful Monsters,” in Natural History, June-July, 1977). The increasing despondency among evolutionists, over their inability to use natural selection or mutations to provide even the slightest evidence of cross-species evolution, eventually led large numbers of scientists, in the 1980s, to switch over to this astoundingly ridiculous concept that millions of beneficial mutations occur once every 50,000 years to two creatures, a male and female, who are living near each other—thus producing a new species pair!

Poll of Citizens and Parents(1973). A survey of 1,346 homes found that 89% said Creation should be taught in the public schools. In a separate poll of 1995 homes, 84% said scientific evidence for Creation should be presented along with evolution (“A Comparison of Students Studying . . Two Models,” in Decade of Creation, 1981, pp. 55-56).Dudley’s Radiodating Research (1975). Radiodating of the sedimentary rocks, based on uranium, thorium, and other chains, had been relied on heavily to provide the “millions of years” dates. But a broad variety of research data repeatedly demonstrated that these methods are extremely unreliable (much more on this in chapter 6, Inaccurate Dating Methods). *H.C. Dudley, one of these researchers, found that using pressure, temperature, electric and magnetic fields, stress in monomolecular layers, etc., he could change the decay rates of 14 different radioisotopes. The implications of this are astounding. The strata were laid down under great pressure, and samples would vary widely to temperature and other changes. Such discoveries, along with the fact that the dates never agree with one another, greatly reduce the value of radiodating uranium, thorium, and other rocks (*H.C. Dudley, “Radioactivity Re-Examined,” in Chemical and Engineering News, April 7, 1975, p. 2).

Source: Evolution Handbook